“Hate” list or Hit list? Morris Dees’ Persecution of the Nation of Islam
Morris Dees’ persecution of the Nation of Islam
Once again, Black people are confronted with the “hate” agenda of a segment of politically and economically powerful white folks whose passion is the perpetual enslavement of the Black man and woman. Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center of Alabama added the Nation of Islam to its list of 474 “hate groups,” which includes the likes of the “skinheads,” the militias, and the Ku Klux Klan. You would think that one had to actually do or say something “hateful” in order to make such a list, but the question one must ask is, “Who is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and who authorized them to assign such labels to Black freedom organizations?”
In 1971, Morris Seligman-Dees (who has dropped the Seligman from his name) and Joseph Levin, founded the non-profit SPLC which they claim to be “dedicated to seeking justice.” Seligman-Dees and Levin are white Alabama “civil rights” attorneys which, they believe, qualifies them to grant titles like “hate group” to Black organizations. But Seligman-Dees’s own history of hate has only recently been exposed and questioned. His deceitful and unprincipled attack on an esteemed Black attorney and true legal freedom fighter plainly disqualifies Seligman-Dees as self-appointed overseer of negro interests.
The Hon. Fred D. Gray was more than a civil rights attorney of the highest caliber, he was the lawyer for Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study victims, and the Selma marchers, among many other front-line legal duties. When President Jimmy Carter nominated Mr. Gray for a U.S. District judgeship in 1979, his legendary record drew praise and respect from even former enemies in the deep South. Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks and Parren Mitchell were among the movement’s heroes testifying at the Senate hearing on behalf of this legal giant. Then came Seligman-Dees. Atty. Gray describes the incident:
The greatest disappointment, which was totally unexpected, was Morris [Seligman-] Dees’s appearance and testimony in opposition to my nomination….I felt betrayed…
Gray was no stranger to Seligman-Dees. Gray had filed the lawsuit that integrated Seligman-Dees’s own high school, and later, when Gray won a seat on the Alabama Legislature, the reception was at Seligman-Dees’s home.
Gray, and the justice-starved Black community were denied the Gray judgeship, and Seligman-Dees has never been held accountable for his part in the loss of a powerful ally for legal justice in Alabama. His subsequent “apology” to Gray was strange: “I’m sorry events led me to be called in D.C. to testify,” he wrote to Gray in 1991. What “events,” Mr. Seligman-Dees? And, if you’ll notice, he’s not “sorry” for his testimony, just for “events.”
Well, this same slippery fellow now calls the Nation of Islam a “hate group” which authorizes law enforcement misbehavior and official harassment and religious persecution of the Old Testament variety. Former FBI Special Agent Tyrone Powers warned of the devious motives behind this “hate group” designation and cautions Blacks about the extralegal intrusion of these private spy organizations into the legal process:
Groups like the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and the Southern Poverty Law Center enjoy unusual and extraordinary access to FBI operations. They are considered `reliable sources’ by their friends at the FBI which is all the FBI needs to trigger investigations which include Hoover-like harrassment of Black people. Wiretaps, the bugging of homes and cars, which are all illegal according to the 4th Amendment, can all be justified by the government.
Additionally, warns Powers, when the FBI designates a group a “hate group,” a series of “hate laws” are triggered which eliminate the civil rights of the so-called “haters.” These laws, which were ostensibly proposed and passed to cripple the KKK and others, are about to be applied in full force against the Nation of Islam.
But this doesn’t mean that “hate” in America will be arrested. Some of the more illustrious practicioners are honored in every hamlet, in every village. Elie Weisel, whose harrowing story of survival in a Nazi camp, is respected and welcomed in every hallowed hall worldwide despite his hate-filled philosophy:
Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate healthy, virile hate for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead.” (Legends of Our Time [1968]), pp.177-78).
If this statement were uttered from the mouth of someone of the wrong religion, that one might end up on the hit-list of the SPLC. But Mr. Wiesel is safely on the white end of this uniquely American double standard.
Contrarily, Minister Louis Farrakhan, the alleged racist, has just returned from an overwhelmingly successful world tour. On the front page of the March 10 issue of his organization’s newspaper, The Final Call, is Farrakhan himself with his European friends, resplendent in a robe and scepter given to him by these white Russians in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe. They call Farrakhan their leader.
But this is too heady for these redneck Alabama “civil rights” attorneys. Could one imagine a KKK leader in a kinte cloth robe and crown surrounded by adoring Ibo in Nigeria? Not hardly. Even as America’s intolerance for free-thinking and -acting Black people has reached fever-pitch, the world community greeted Min. Farrakhan with open arms everywhere from Red China to White Muslim Russia, Black Africa and the Caribbean, and this is why white America is being stampeded by the ADL and the SPLC to make Min. Farrakhan America’s Enemy #1.
The traditional civil rights establishment is not going to be able to sit this one out as their “allies” attempt this hateful assault on the Black community. NAACP executive Uncle Tom Julian Bond colleagued with both Seligman-Dees and Levin in the early days of the SPLC. In fact, Bond is listed as a co-founder. This action, on the part of his comrades clearly crosses the line and places ALL of the Black community in dangerous waters. All organizations, but especially Bond’s NAACP, need to speak up and strongly rebuke the actions of the Southern Poverty Law Center and all those who seek to manipulate the Black agenda by remote control.
More information:
Southern Poverty Law Center’s Lucrative ‘Hate Group’ Label